One Public Estate

Our award-winning One Public Estate programme – delivered in partnership with by the Local Government Association, Office of Government Property (OGP) within the Cabinet Office and Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC), supports locally-led partnerships of public sector bodies to kickstart regeneration and transform public service delivery.

Banner with OPE logos and the words celebrating 10 years since 2013

About One Public Estate

One Public Estate (OPE) began in 2013 working with 12 council areas and a handful of government departments. To date it has supported over 800 projects, spanning 98 per cent of English councils, 12 government departments and hundreds of public sector stakeholders, helping transform local communities and public services right across the country.

How we work

OPE is an established national programme delivered in partnership by the Office of Government Property (OGP) within the Cabinet Office and the Local Government Association (LGA). It provides practical and technical support and funding to councils to deliver ambitious property-focused programmes in collaboration with central government and other public sector partners.

OPE partnerships across the country have shown the value of working together across the public sector and taking a strategic approach to asset management. At its heart, the programme is about getting more from our collective assets - whether that’s catalysing major service transformation such as health and social care integration and benefits reform; unlocking land for new homes and commercial space; or creating new opportunities to save on running costs or generate income. This is encompassed in three core objectives:

  • creating economic growth (new homes and jobs)
  • delivering more integrated, customer-focused services
  • generating efficiencies, through capital receipts and reduced running costs. 

By 2023 OPE partnerships have delivered over 40,000 jobs, releasing land for almost 38,000 new homes, raising £576 million in capital receipts and cutting running costs by £99 million.

The essentials

  • Generating ideas; a shared vision shaping for public sector assets
  • Bringing public sector partners together through locally led partnerships
  • Ongoing professional and technical support, including asset mapping
  • OPE Revenue funding unlocking significant benefits through colocation opportunities, providing land for homes and jobs, improving public service delivery, reducing running costs for improved public sector efficiency and delivering capital receipts for reinvestment
  • Brownfield Land Release Funding (BLRF) to unlock council-owned sites for housing, by addressing site viability issues
  • Place Pilot Programme – exploring long term collective estate ambitions in five pilot areas across England

Partnership support

  • Funding through OPE and BLRF
  • Regional support from LGA and OGP
  • Access across central government
  • Sharing OPE best practice and case studies
  • Opportunities workshops to develop your programme of work
  • Support to change policy to assist local delivery
  • Technical support on benchmarking and data

Contact us

To get in touch with us please contact your regional OPE programme manager, or email us at [email protected].

For any Freedom of Information requests regarding the OPE programme, please email Cabinet Office at [email protected].